An Interview with Ryan Fluff Bruce of Dragged Under

Currently bouncing around the UK are Seattles  Dragged Under. Sarah Cummings caught up with lead guitarist Fluff prior to their Manchester gig at Star and Garter to hear what he had to say about their UK tour, their brand new album and fun times with airlines…

“Firstly, welcome to the UK”

Yes, hello, it’s been a long week! I am loving it here, yes. Despite a few setbacks… So we flew in and we got detained for 3 hours because of a visa issue, which was lovely! And then when we got out of Visa Jail, we then discovered that the airline had lost all our gear, which was also awesome. I had it all keytagged so I could track it all by phone and then I was like “ITS ALL STLL IN SEATTLE”. So there was that. Then at dinner two nights ago my tooth had some wild shooting pains, I had to go and get that looked at, I had an abscess that they didn’t know about so I had to then get an emergency root canal.. got out of my uber all numbed up to play the show. Unbelievable. Oh and all my show clothes got lost.

”You say show clothes like they are something super flamboyant.”

Yes, massive costumes. No, it’s like all my shoes, pants, shirts, all of it. So I’ve had to go out and buy it all again, but shopping in England is pretty cool. 

“Is it really that cool?”

It’s because its fresh and new to me! No, shopping here is very nice. 

“So besides some real life disasters, how is the tour actually going so far?”

It’s amazing; the shows are incredible and we’ve never played headline shows before so to come across the world and have people sing along to our stuff is incredible. 

“That included a slot at the massive Download festival.”

We got the gear for that show from the airline right before it, we had no time to check anything. We had to uncase it, plug it in, hope for the best.

“I want to talk a bit about the new album, but before we go into that, I want to revisit the wonderous clusterfuck of a year that was 2020. You started 2020 by doing a run of shows in the US with The Used. Did you manage to finish that tour in its entirety?”

We did get to play all those dates. We were on that tour on the very last date, and we were in the green room with them (The Used) and they were supposed to be going over to Japan and we were like ‘Are you going over there?’ and they were like ‘Ermmmmm I’m not really sure’. We got through the whole thing and then the world shut down like 4 days later. It was wild. 

Your first album, “The World Is In Your Way”, came out at the start of 2020 and you had that tour with the The Used. How did the pandemic effect you as a band?

Well we had a bit of a trajectory. The Used tour started in L.A. and by the time we got to New York there were 12 labels at the show. We got off the tour, the world shut down, and we had this crazy bidding war between the labels, and then we actually signed the record deal  in June 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, which felt pretty crazy. Suddenly off the back of that all these shows were being booked, our first European shows were booked then… and then all that got cancelled anyway. Some of these shows have been postponed twice if I am not mistaken. 

“So when you take that into account, it must feel like you’ve been waiting a really long time to do these shows”

Oh yeah, we really have, we thought it was never going to happen. 2 years we were waiting for this to happen, now we’re finally here. 

“You’ve now just released your second album, “Upright Animals”. Can you tell me if there was any major differences in the writing process between “The World Is In Your Way” and “Upright Animals”?”

The first record was literally myself, Tony (singer) and Josh (original guitar player) and our producer Hiram in the studio. We weren’t a band, our earlier band had split up and we had studio time booked, and we were sitting here just passing the guitar round, eating thai food, and drinking energy drinks in the middle of a snow storm, and then we had this album which we had to form a band around. This time we have Hans in the band, and Hans is an educated musician as well as our bassist, and he was the guy this time around who would go “That should be a C” or “That should be D Chord”. I think because of that, this album is much more refined and it’s much more coherent. I think we wanted it to be a mixtape for our own band, whereas the first record is stylistically a little but all over the place, but it was a lot of fun in its moment in time. This one was much more cohesive and fine and finished. 

“I know its early days, with Upright Animals only being released a week ago, but what has the feedback from the album been like so far?”

Pretty nuts actually! We have spent the better part of a year and a half with these songs, getting them finished, getting them ironed out, so they aren’t really that new to us, but playing them for the world is pretty cool. It’s a good thing that people are like “THIS IS SICKKKK” because when you release an album you don’t know if anyone’s even going to like it. 

“Are there any songs in particular that you are proud of?”

The last song on the album, ‘This Is The End’, that’s all Tony and Hans. They really wanted to make a My Chemical Romance Black Parade crazy epic thing. I think ‘All of Us’ is probably my favourite song on the record, that ended up being so epic and I had never heard Tony do that vocally. He does that pitch screech Sam Carter type thing and I was like “What?!? You can do that? That is crazy”. I think both of those songs are really incredible.

“You are from Seattle, which has such a rich musical history. Can you tell me a bit about your musical roots there?”

Born and raised! I was 11, 12, when “Nevermind” came out and Grunge just exploded in the Seattle area. I grew up in the 90s, being a 90s teenager you couldn’t help but soak all that stuff up, going to free shows at the Mural Ampitheatre . All of that really sits with you. All of that is part of our heritage. Not all of us are from Seattle, our singer is from California but he very much is a huge fan of all the grunge bands of that era. They influenced pretty much everybody. 

“What’s your favourite venue to play?”

Download festival! Haha that was pretty sick. I suspect though it will probably end up being Brixton.

“Is this when you support The Ghost Inside?”

Yep! I used to watch this thing back in the 90s called “I’m ok, Euro-K” which was a Foo Fighters show at Brixton in 1995 and they’d play that on MTV at like Christmas time, and I just associate that venue with them and all my favourite bands have played there. 

“What is coming up next for you?”

Lots and lots and lots of touring. I think we’re on tour currently until mid October. Not all the dates are announced yet, but yeah, I think we’re going to be away until basically Christmas time. 

“Do you cope well with touring? I’ve spoken to bands before now who seemingly struggle with that aspect of being away from home.”

I think so! The thing that makes touring really tough since covid is touring is like a muscle , like you’re going to the gym or something like that, and hauling gear, not sleeping very well and not eating very well, you have to acclimate to that. We did a run with Beartooth about 6 months ago and the hard thing now is touring for a month and half and then not doing it for 6 months. Your body just freaks out and that’s what makes it really hard when you couldn’t stay out for 6 months at a time. Currently though we’re going to be only home for 2 weeks until October, which is nuts. But we love touring. Although I will say, we’re not big fans of all the stairs you guys have here!

”Yep. Lots of stairs, no lifts.”

Oh my God, and there’s some clubs that are like “Oh yeah we have  a lift but it’s not worked for 30 years”. Like why?!? How much could it be to fix it? Come on, let me pay for it. You need to fix it.

“Thank you so much for your time today Fluff and good luck with the rest of the tour. “